He and She

He
He was the younger of 2 children in the family. Guys who are the youngest in the family usually do one thing - rebel. And that's exactly what he did.

Class teachers in school usually define their own categories of students - students whom they love to see sitting inside the classroom and students whom they love to see standing outside the classroom. He belonged to the latter category. Homework has to be done when you are at home and the best way to not do it is to be not at home. Most of his time was spent on the streets.

College life brought its own thrills. His circle of friends mostly consisted of guys who exhaled circles of smoke from their mouth and consumed fermented liquid to keep their body temperature down. Start of the academic year brought great joy to him - not because of his thirst for knowledge but because of the opportunity to rag a fresh batch of youngsters. Some even said that a fresher committed suicide because of the humiliation. He was definitely sad when he heard about this - sad that there will be one less person to rag. Whenever he attended classes - which was very rarely - his presence was 100% physical and 0% mental. Exams were followed by results and his results always resulted in the “F” word, in more ways than one.

Bikes were his passion and he had a bike which was yellow in color - a strange color for a bike but maybe it indicated that there was a softer side in him. But even if it was there, it was miles deep down and no one outside ever got to see this. He didn’t need helmets - they are for people with soft skulls. The favorite past time of him and his other biker friends was to zoom along Fate Road. The actual name of the road was Fatehpur Road and like most road signs in this country, half the characters in the name were missing. But he liked to boast “I was zooming across the road of Fate” and he liked the sound of it. When they race along the road, the end point is usually the statue of the “unknown man” - the name because no one knows whose statue it is. But the birds treated the statue like that of any other famous personality - sit and shit - and the human beings treated the statue like that of any other famous personality - sit and spit.

Parents feel that marriage is the only way to control guys like him. As cinematic as it may sound, it is true in most cases. So they found a girl for him - a girl from a respected and well to do family. It was not easy to find a girl because of his famous presence on the streets. The girl’s parents agreed because they knew his parents and they also knew that their daughter is capable of reforming a guy like him. He was hardly interested in the marriage and he simply refused to even see the photo of the girl. But he knew that finally he will not have any other option but to marry the girl.

She
She was the eldest of 2 children in the family. Girls who are usually the eldest in the family usually know one thing - responsibility. And that's exactly what she knew.

She was the kind of student in school who would not eat for a couple of days if she did not get the first rank in any exam - even if she missed it by a single mark. Excitement for her came from solving a math problem and not from playing with friends. She was the darling for most of the teachers and the only reason why some teachers did not like her was because she was better than their darlings.

Admission to college was very easy as she had very good marks. She got the college of her choice and the subject of her choice. She was one of the college students who treat college as senior school and do not change much. But the competition was tougher and her determination to succeed even stronger. She wanted to join the software industry not because of the money but because of real passion (a characteristic very hard to find). She did get an opportunity to work for an MNC and soon she was climbing up the over-used ladder. As someone in the organization said “she was too good to be true”.

Her parents decided to arrange for her marriage and they came to know about him through a common friend. She saw the photo of the guy and of course he was handsome. But the more she came to know about him, the more she felt her hands full. She took it as challenge and she decided to reform him after the marriage. He became her fiancé.

As she was driving to work one day, her thinking was driving towards the marriage which was to happen in the next few weeks and how happy her brother would have been. She was very close to her brother and he joined college the day she joined work. It was a double delight for her parents. But one of the delights melted away very soon. Her brother committed suicide and the only complaint he had was the ragging in college. This thought process automatically increased the pressure on the accelerator pedal. If only she met the guy who did this to her brother...

Her car came to a grinding halt. Just a few seconds before, there was a loud bang and the four wheeler hit a two wheeler. A crowd of completely unrelated and jobless individuals was beginning to gather and when she saw down she saw a guy lying in a pool of blood. He was conscious - their eyes met. She recognized him. He just closed his eyes - for eternity. The shattered yellow bike was lying right below the statue of the “unknown man”.

They only met once, but it changed their lives forever.